fping quickly pings multiple hosts, specified on the command-line or
in a file, to determine their reachability without flooding the network.
Instead of trying one host until it times out or replies, fping will
send out a ping packet and move on to the next host in a round-robin
fashion. If a host replies, it is noted and removed from the list of
hosts to check. If a host does not respond within a certain time limit
and/or retry limit it will be considered unreachable. 

fping is meant to be used in scripts and its output is easy to parse.

N.B. The binaries installed by this package are setuid root.
